I short while ago, the kind people at GoPayment.com asked me if I’d like to be interviewed about hiring an app developer. The end result of that has been posted today, and can be read here.

Yesterday, both of my Math apps received a minor update in the App Store. The changes were really very minor, but a part of my desire to maintain and support those people that have bought the apps. If you are one of those people and have some feedback, please let me know if there’s something you’d like to see added or improved.

Another piece of news is that my new app, Claustrophobic has been submitted to Apple and is awaiting review. I’l really quite excited about this app; it’s a real step up for PKCLsoft, and I’m hoping that people are going to love it.

A lot of thought has been put into the game concept, the sounds, the visuals. There’s still a lot more I want to do with the game, and I have a plan of added features, new game twists, etc.

Ove the next week or so, I’ll be posting more game play videos to give people a feel for the game. Once it’s available, players will have the ability to share their games via the built-in Kamcord feature. I’m really looking forward to seeing how people play, what strategies they use, etc.

Claustrophobic, a new game for the Apple family of iDevices running iOS 5 or later, is almost ready to release.

In this game, the aim is to keep your ball rolling as long as you can. When it’s moving above a minimum speed, your score increases. If you stop or slow down, so does the score.

As time moves forwards, the space you have on the screen in which to move reduces, as the boundaries move inwards.

As you roll around the screen, controlling the direction of the ball by tilting your device, various obstacles, tokens and power-up’s appear on screen. It’s up to you to dodge or hit them to keep the game going. Some will give you points, some will end the game, some will affect how your ball moves.

This game has been built from the ground up to work on all of the new Apple devices, especially the iPad Retina, iPad Mini and iPhone 5.

A teaser/trailer video has been posted on Youtube to give you a feel for the game ahead of it’s release.

If you want to know more about the game, write a comment here, or email me via the support email address on this site.

With less than 2 days to go till Christmas day here in Australia, I thought it was time to wish everyone out there a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year.

I’m also moved to say that whilst I’m based in Australia, I want to express my best wishes to those families affected directly or indirectly by the shootings in Newtown just a week ago.

It’s very easy for us in Australia to feel glad that we have effective control over guns, but it doesn’t diminish how shocking it is for us to see these events unfold overseas.

So as a final message from me, please have a safe Christmas break where you can remember how important family is. Acknowledge those you see this year and show them you’re glad they are a part of your life. Don’t let people feel alone.

With the recent update to iOS 6.0 and the beautiful iPhone 5, it became necessary to update several of my apps to work with the new screen size. Whilst Apple

did us developers a huge favour by ensuring existing apps worked on the new phone, the “letterbox” effect detracted from the experience of owning an iPhone 5 in the first place.

When I updated uAlertMe, I took the opportunity to not only increase the screen size, but to revamp the look altogether. It now sports nice new retina artwork for both the iPhone 4/4s and the iPhone 5. In addition to this, I also thought it would be great to add some new features that have been long coming.

The most important new feature was social integration. I’ve always wanted users to have the ability to post or tweet the images received from the Mac running iAlertU, and iOS 6.0, with it’s deeply embedded support for both Twitter and Facebook, made this a natural addition.

So now, wherever you can see an image or screenshot, you will also have a handy tweet & post buttons allowing you to do just that. Just remember to tell your iOS 6.0 iPhone that you have a twitter or facebook account.

Wow, it’s been 9 months since my last post, and so much has happened since then. It’s been so busy, and I find myself so caught up in keeping track of other sites like my facebook page, the Parents with Apps forum (a ‘child’ of Moms with apps), various review sites, and promotions such as the AppyBack2School even being run throughout August by the Technology in (Spl) Education website.

This all started out as a hobby for me. I wanted to keep my hand in some contemporary development, and I’ve always loved working with Apple products (and that goes back more years than I care to admit).

After my last post, back in October 2011, I came to the realisation that kids are getting through primary school without learning some basic skills. I went to a parent information evening at the school which turned out to be all about parents needing to help their kids with their math skills. Kids entering this school at Year 7 come from all over, and the range of abilities/knowledge was apparently quite diverse.

So I set out to write what was going to be a simple Times Tables app to do my bit. My kids were not having any trouble, but it highlighted to me that there was a need. Looking at the app store, I could see that there was plenty of competition, but it seemed that there was still room to move as people seemed to want something more.

Thus, Tap Times Tables was created over the next month or so. Both of my kids got involved with it’s design and interaction, and whilst it hasn’t broken any records, it’s done OK, certainly better than I had expected given the flooded market.

Soon after it’s release, I was asked to write a similar app for addition and subtraction, and Math Plus Minus is the result.

So, for the next little bit, leading up to the end of the Australian school year, both apps were out there, and were quite a celebration of having done something positive. I could see that the apps were being used on a daily basis, and from some of the feedback emails I was receiving, I could also see that they were being used within school environments.

Then the school holidays hit, and sales took a bit of a dive. Even today, although I have never specifically targeted Australia, my sales here have far outweighed those overseas. Not having any sort of marketing ability, I just accepted it and waited for school to go back.

Now, recently, the northern hemisphere has gone on holidays, and it seems that the entire education app developer community is spending a great deal of time trying to keep the sales happening during the break.

I’ve been so busy with new app development on the side that I’ve not had time to join in the marketing in the way I probably should have.

In an attempt to rectify this, I’ve shelved my other app work and am currently adding some really great features to both math apps that will make them far more useful in a classroom environment. My hope was to have these released by the 1st of August to coincide with the AppyBack2School promotion during August, but I’m running behind.

What have I been doing? Well, to start with I’ve added the ability for a teacher to, via a Google Docs spreadsheet, enter a roster of student names for an entire year level and import this into the apps. This means that for a school which has a bank of iPads or iPod Touches with my apps installed, they can hand them out to students and allow the students to use the apps, recording their results against their name, and reporting it back to a teacher via email.

A sample spreadsheet for this would look like the following:

In this example, we have a roster for Grade 4, comprising 4 classes of students where the name of each class includes the name of the teacher.

In addition to this, I’ve added the ability to create a lesson. Each lesson consists of one or more questions that can be played in the main game of the app. The beauty of this is that the teacher can now take control of what questions the students are answering. They can even specify what incorrect answers will be shown so that all students are presented with the same options on screen (thus levelling the play field).

Combining this with the roster, it becomes easy for the teacher to distribute a “test” to students within the app that they can sit, and then submit results for.

An example lesson for Tap Times Tables is:

In this example, we have 12 questions for a lesson called “Mixed tables”.

I’m really pleased with these changes to the apps, as they really represent a move from being what started out as “simple” learning aids, to becoming real classroom aware tools.

It is my sincere hope that with the beginning of the school year in the northern hemisphere, my efforts within the apps, and the efforts of people like Siva at Technology in (Spl) Education that I’ll see the apps being used more and more.

I never went into this to get rich (although my family wouldn’t mind), but if I can bask in the inner glow of knowing I’ve helped some kids out, and made a little on the side as I do then that would be great.

A friendly user has noted that my optimizer tool was being a little severe. Any menus created within iWeb with rollovers would end up not working after optimization because the rollover images were being optimized, placing them where the javascript Apple provides can’t find them.

>A friendly user has noted that my optimizer tool was being a little severe. Any menus created within iWeb with rollovers would end up not working after optimization because the rollover images were being optimized, placing them where the javascript Apple provides can’t find them.

A few days back, uAlertMe v1.2 hit the app store. This version added a browse function for setting up a bonjour connection to your Mac, plus a history of location in the map view. It also fixed a number of issues relating to the way uAlertMe stored images in your camera roll.

Since the release of v1.2, I’ve noticed a small (<10) number of crashes from the new version that seem to be happening when people try to use the new browse feature. I haven't been able to reproduce them here, no matter what I do, but I think I can see what might be happening.

To this end, I’ve submitted v1.3 to the app store, which I’m hoping will address these issues.

If you are having trouble with uAlertMe, please use the support email address (support@pkclsoft.com) so that you can let me know what you were doing when you had the problem.

Likewise, if there are features you’d like to see, email me or post your suggestions here.